Former Coalition minister Karen Andrews has said she was unable to convince any women to nominate themselves for the Liberal National Party preselection for her safe seat on the Gold Coast.
Andrews has held the seat of McPherson for 14 years and announced last year she would not contest her seat in the 2025 election. She holds the seat with a 12.2 per cent margin.
On the weekend, there was a Liberal National Party preselection vote for the Gold Coast seat, where four men – and not one woman – nominated to be the party’s next candidate.
Speaking to ABC News, Andrews said it “wasn’t for want of trying” that there were no women in the McPherson preselection vote, noting the lack of women in the Liberal Party, and the lack of women wanting to join the Coalition, is “enormously frustrating”.
“I certainly approached a number of women but couldn’t get them across the line for a range of reasons,” Andrews said.
She said women were reluctant to face the “constant criticism and constant, constant negativity.”
Andrews said the last federal election in 2022 saw a “very low” number of women from the Liberal party going into parliament. Prior to the 2022 federal election, analysis by the ANU Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found just 20 per cent of female candidates in the Coalition were contesting winnable seats.
As it stands, just 28 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are women. It’s a far cry from the 50 per cent target that an internal review recommended the party achieve within the next decade.
Andrews, who has always been “very public” about her “disappointment” in the lack of Liberal party women, said she doesn’t want the number of Liberal women in parliament to “slip any further” in the 2025 election.
“I’ve also said that I don’t have to be replaced by a woman, but I am terribly disappointed that there was not a female in the mix for the LNP,” she said.
“What seems to be an issue is making sure that the major parties are putting up as their candidates, particularly in winnable seats… women who could then be elected.”
Noting the success of the “teal independent” women on the crossbench, Andrews said: “It’s very clear that the Australian community has no issue with electing women to federal parliament.”
Andrews’ replacement as the LNP candidate for the seat of McPherson in the 2025 election will be Leon Rebello. Originally from Canberra, he is a solicitor and moved to the Gold Coast three years ago.
When ABC News asked him on the lack of women preselected by the Liberal party, he pointed out the other preselected candidate in Queensland is a woman, lawyer Maggie Forrest, who will be the candidate in the inner-Brisbane seat of Ryan. Ryan is currently held by a Greens MP, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who won the seat in 2022.
Responding to the so called “woman problem”, the Liberal party established a women’s network last month, named after former Liberal Senator and the first woman to hold a cabinet ministerial portfolio in Australia, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle.
The women’s network was established based on one of the recommendations in the review to “provide opportunities and avenues for continued involvement for professional women associated with the party”.